Written from recollections in May 2023
This is a funfair I used to visit with my good friend B back in the late 1980s or thereabouts. He used to live a short walk from the park at the time and we would head over there on foot as soon as it opened for business, usually in the early part of the afternoon. It would stay in the park for a few weeks or just several days before moving on.
The funfair used to appear once or twice a year, a bit like the one at Valentines Park in Ilford, which you can read about here. The spring and summer months in particular were popular and the only way you knew it existed was when advertising boards went up on the park gates and fences or if by chance you were reading the local newspapers. Remember, this is before the internet was a thing so word of mouth or good old in your face advertising worked wonders.
I think the funfair here and at Valentines Park were briefly run by the same company because I remember them being called or themed as ‘James Bond’ fairs at both locations. However, I can only guess this was the case. But what was evident at both places were the abundance of stalls with arcade games during the 1990s.
On one occasion B came across a Chase HQ, one of his favourite games at the time. I remember playing this and finishing the game which contained five increasingly difficult car chases. Chase HQ was housed inside an upright cabinet, these were pretty common compared to the rare cockpit version that we had stumbled across in the unknown arcade in Woolwich. An excellent and very playable racing game all round and influenced in some way by the popular 1980s TV series Miami Vice.
The only other games I can recall in the early part of the 1990s when we frequented the funfair were the various legitimate and bootleg copies of Street Fighter 2. These were on a host of weird and wonderful cabinets of all shapes and sizes. A lot of time and money went into these and on the odd occasion some very good players would show up and display their skill either against the computer or human opponents.
Sega Afterburner might also have put in an appearance here in the form of the little seen commander type cockpit cabinet that swayed from side to side. I do remember playing this but am not sure if it was here or at Valentines. What I can say for certain is that a Sega Outrun in some shape and form did appear here. Initially there was a sit down standard type cabinet, the one below the deluxe model, which also swayed from left to right like a pendulum but proved just as popular as any of the other cabinets Outrun could be found in.
As the years wore on I only went back to the funfair out of curiosity in the 2000s a handful of times. Arcade games were disappearing fast, as was the case with the funfair at Valentines. In 2007 or 2008 I was walking by the funfair as they were about to close up for the night and decided to take a quick look. There were almost no arcade machines but one of the stalls had a surprise in store as I discovered a mini-upright version of Outrun on play with all the controls working. For the next 30 minutes or so I proceeded to play the game before the owner came up and told me they were closing up.It was at his point that we got talking and I made him an offer of about £300-350 for the Outrun. He said he was interested but the game still made a modest income. He asked me to come back in the few months when the fair returned and he might change his mind.
Well, I did not manage to return until a year or so later and when speaking with the store owner about the Outrun I was sad to discover he had scrapped it as he said it had stopped working. Make of that what you will. Maybe this was the case and it was a sorry demise for such a classic game and cabinet. On the other hand he might have just as easily sold it on for a decent amount and made up a story about it getting thrown out. Either way, I could not say I was the proud owner of an original Sega Outrun arcade machine. On that return visit arcade games had all but disappeared and other fairground attractions, rides and prize stalls had taken over. The age of the super powerful console was in full swing and smartphones were being taken from concept to reality. The rest, as they say, is history.
